Ktaadn: Thoreau’s Sublime Encounter

November 15, 2010

The Romantic Sublime

To be inspired by a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power. It is calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur

In his Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant refers to experiences which seem to overwhelm us; we feel we ‘cannot get our head around them’. This is either mainly ‘mathematical’ – if our ability to intuit is overwhelmed by size (a huge building) – or ‘dynamical’ – if our ability to will or resist is overwhelmed by force (a violent storm).

The sublime crisis (incomprehensibility) is followed a sublime turn (we see our cognitive failure and become adequate to it in the moment)

The Sublime in Art: J.M.W. Turner’s Snow Storm

In Redwood National Forest (CA)

The Half Dome (Yosemite CA)

The Full Dome (Yosemite CA)

Yosemite National Park, CA

Mount Katadhin, Appalachian Trail, Maine

The Sublime Turn in Ktaadn (published posthumously in 1864)

“Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific, — not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried in, — no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there, — the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. There was there felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites, — to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we. We walked over it with a certain awe, stopping, from time to time, to pick the blueberries which grew there, and had a smart and spicy taste. Perchance where our wild pines stand, and leaves lie on their forest floor, in Concord, there were once reapers, and husbandmen planted grain; but here not even the surface had been scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world. What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star's surface, some hard matter in its home! I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one, — that my body might, — but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”

Thoreau’s Ktaadn

For Thoreau, America is a repository for a new, natural sublime (it is not Europe nor some distant, exotic locale)

America was (and in some ways still is) the home of places and spaces defined primarily by their emotional value (Main Street, home sweet home, the summer retreat)